


I Ain't A Judas

by deepestfathoms



Category: Carrie - All Media Types, Carrie - Stephen King, Carrie: The Musical - Gore/Pritchard/Cohen
Genre: Anxiety, Blood and Injury, Depression, Found Family, Gen, Injury Recovery, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sister-Sister Relationship, big sister Sue!!!!!!, carrie is younger than Sue and all the others. so like 15 maybe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29321427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepestfathoms/pseuds/deepestfathoms
Summary: Sue was cradling a tiny, shaking, bleeding body in her arms.(au where the massacre never happens)
Relationships: Rita Desjardin & Carrie White, Susan Snell & Carrie White
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	1. jugular

**Author's Note:**

> this is the Off-West End take on Carrie!!! so instead of Carrie getting stabbed, she gets her throat slashed. also she's a little redhead!!!!!!

There was blood everywhere. 

Blood on the old hardwood floors, blood on Margaret White’s white nightgown, blood on Carrie White’s pretty pink dress that she sewed herself, blood in Carrie White’s hair, blood on the knife, blood all over Sue Snell’s hands.

There was too much blood.

Carrie, small, defenseless, innocent Carrie, was gasping and wheezing in Sue’s arms. The sounds she was making reminded Sue of a kicked puppy, painful just to listen to, heartbreaking even.

There was so much blood…

Sue thought to take her phone out eventually. Without the support of her other arm, Carrie’s body slouched further to the ground, causing her to make a gargled sound of pain. Sue apologized to her as she unlocked her phone with one hand. The other one was the only thing keeping Carrie from bleeding out. She couldn’t risk pulling it away for even a second.

_ “911, what’s your emergency?”  _ Said the operator on the other end. 

“We need an ambulance!” Sue yelled, much louder than she had intended. Along with her emotions, she wasn’t able to properly control her volume. “Please. You have to send one  _ NOW.  _ I have a girl bleeding out. Her mother cut her throat. Please,  _ please  _ send help.”

_ “Ma’am, please calm down,”  _ The operator commanded in a firm, yet gentle voice.  _ “Help is on the way. Do you think you can tell me more about what happened?”  _

Sue took a few deep breaths to try and contain her nerves. When she looked down at Carrie’s spasming body, her anguish came rushing back to her all over again.

_ You did this. This is your fault. _

“H-her mother attacked her,” Sue said, glancing at the unmoving corpse of Margaret White nearby. Carrie was still trying to reach for her, occasionally letting out small moans of desperation for her mother. Sue pulled her closer with one arm. “Her throat got slashed. She’s still alive, but there’s blood everywhere.”

_ “Where are you?” _

__ “The White house. I don’t know the address.” 

Not that it mattered. Everyone in the whole city knew about the White residence.

_ “The ambulance will be there shortly,”  _ The operator said.  _ “Keep pressure on the wound. Don’t let her fall asleep.” _

__ “Thank you, thank you,” Sue said. She couldn’t hold her phone anymore, she needed to support Carrie, so she put it down and pulled Carrie closer. She tightened her grip on the wound on Carrie’s throat, and Carrie let out a wail of pain. “I know, sweetie, I know…”

Well. At least she could still make noise. Surely that had to be a good thing.

“It’s going to be okay,” Sue told her. “Help is on the way. They’ll be here soon.”

Would they even make it in time?

Sue couldn’t tell the difference between the blood from Carrie’s neck and the blood on Carrie’s dress. At this point, there was no difference at all. Both came from an innocent creature that did not deserve the fate they received. 

It was the news of the prank that sent her to the White bungalow in the first place. At the time, she cursed the person who had recorded the blood dump in the first place, but now she thanked God for it, despite the darkness of their actions. If she hadn’t seen that video…

She got a sick, twisty feeling in her gut and tried not to think about what would have happened to Carrie. What was happening at that moment was hard enough to deal with as is.

The video kept replaying behind Sue’s eyes. Keeping them open wasn’t any better, and she didn’t know which version of Carrie she preferred. The Carrie in her lap may have been bleeding out and dying, but at least she wasn’t screaming and crying. Not anymore, at least.

Carrie had been standing up on the stage with Tommy, grinning brighter than Sue had ever seen before. She never looked as happy as she had been in those moments before devastation- hell, she never looked happy in the first place. Sue had only seen true bliss from Carrie White in very brief, fleeting, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it instances- when Miss Gardener cancelled the FitnessGram Pacer Test, when Mr. Stephens said her writing was the best in the class, when it would rain during school and she got to sit by the window so she could watch it come down, when she got to sit out during gym class. But even then, they weren’t pure joy. Not really. They were never anything a girl her age should feel happy about. 

Was there  _ anything  _ that truly made Carrie happy?

In the video, Carrie’s eyes were glowing bright enough to make the sun’s supernova jealous. She had an adorable, addictive smile, and Sue remembered smiling herself before everything went to complete hell. Seeing Carrie up there made up for the lingering sense of longing from not getting to go to Prom herself. 

She did that. She made Carrie smile.

But then it all fell apart. 

The bucket hadn’t been in frame. There wasn’t even a warning over the sound of the student body singing their Alma Mater to the two new high school royals. But then there was blood and there was screaming and there was fear and there was  _ blood. _

It went everywhere. Carrie’s beautiful pink dress turned a disgusting shade of scarlet as the blood fell all over her small, skinny body. Her hair, already the color of ginger, became so dark it could pass as black. Rivulets of red ran down her arms, oozing off her fingers and into the dark lake all around her .

The only sound was the creak of the rope that the bucket was attached to and the splattering of blood on the floor. Nobody moved, nobody breathed, nobody spoke a word.

Then, Carrie’s eyes opened.

She stared down at her hands, covered in blood, as if she had dug them through someone’s stomach. Her breathing picked up slowly, faster and faster and faster, until her body was heaving with the weight of her panting. When she finally opened her mouth to gasp for air, her nose clogged by blood, a whimper came out.

And then a cry.

And then a scream.

She screamed a horrible, nightmare-haunting scream that reverberated throughout the gym and jammed itself into the ears of the audience and any viewers of the video alike. It cut off after a moment and she stared at her hands again in horror, like she was hoping they would be clean, but the red still remained. She tried to scrub at her arms, her shoulder, her stomach, but the blood only smeared and coated her skin even further. She whimpered and keened loudly, scratching and clawing desperately. Someone in the audience snorted.

“WHAT THE HELL?” Tommy roared in fury. He was the first to snap out of the terror-stricken spell, and all he seemed to feel at that moment was outrage. Spattered in blood, he rounded on the audience. “WHO DID THIS?”

No answer. Someone snorted again. A few people murmured. Heads whipped around frantically.

“ _ WHO DID THIS?! _ ” Tommy screeched again. He looked around and seemed to spot something in the wings of the stage that the camera couldn’t catch. He went after whatever it was.

Like that, with Tommy’s jarring sprint into motion, the trance that had descended over the gym was broken. People began to exclaim in shock and whisper to one another. A few took out their phones to take pictures. The person taking the video snorted and then burst into howls of laughter.

And everyone else joined in.

Screaming and sobbing, Carrie ran from the stage and disappeared from sight. The video ended, but Carrie still remained, as did the memories, as did the guilt.

Sue did that. Sue made Carrie fall apart.

God, how could she be so  _ blind _ ? How could she have thought sending Carrie to Prom would fix everything she’d done? 

If the pain she was feeling was this bad, she didn’t want to know what Carrie was feeling.

There was a sound from the front of the house; the paramedics were there already? How long had she been thinking back on that horrible video? Was Carrie even still alive?

Footsteps approached rapidly. Sue hadn’t heard the sound of the door opening, but then she remembered that she hadn’t closed it.

Miss Gardener appeared in the archway of the living room like an angel sent from heaven. She was panting heavily, sweat beaded on her forehead, making Sue wonder if she ran all the way there, but then her breathing hitched, catching in her throat when she took in the scene laid out before her.

Blood. Everywhere.

Sue’s one-track, panicked mind snagged on the image of her coach wearing a dress. She never expected tough-as-nails, run-you-till-you-vomit Miss Gardener to ever touch such a garment with a fifty foot pole, let alone actually wear it. She may have laughed about it if it weren’t for the entire situation or if she still had the capability to laugh. She didn’t think she would ever feel happy again after that night.

If Carrie succumbed to the blood loss, there was a bottle of pills with her name on it awaiting her back at home.

Sue wondered what it would be like to find clarity in her own demise. She wanted to take that knife over there on the floor and plunge and drag and drag and  _ drag  _ until her own blood covered up Carrie’s own, until it equated to everything the young girl had lost over the years, until she was nothing but an empty shell of the awful person she was, but it would not be enough, not for Carrie. Not to make up for everything she had done. She would need more time, more lives to simply scratch the surface of the torture that Carrie had endured. And Sue would have willingly let it happen. Again and again, she would die for Carrie if it meant Carrie got to smile like she did in the video, before the blood dump. She would do anything if Carrie got to live from this night.

Miss Gardener rushed over, moving startlingly fast in the heels she was wearing, which Sue was shocked about her having on, too. She sloshed through an accumulating puddle of blood, then fell to her knees before the two of them. Sue found herself pulling Carrie closer to her, protective, like a mother hawk shielding her chicks.

“What happened?” Miss Gardener demanded. There was fear all over her face, too much for her to mask with her toughness, but her voice did not show it. It was firm and serious and so incredibly worried.

“Her mother,” Sue glanced at Margaret White’s corpse, and Miss Gardener’s eyes followed. “She tried to kill her. She cut her. She’s bleeding so much, Miss Gardener.”

“Where?” Miss Gardener asked. She looked at the shirt tied around Carrie’s neck and the fear turned to pure terror. “Sue--”

“Her throat,” Sue’s voice wavered. “She slit her throat.”

Saying it out loud felt like a punch to the gut, like a knife to her own jugular. Saying it out loud made it  _ real _ , and Sue wasn’t ready to accept the fact that Carrie truly was bleeding to death in her arms.

Miss Gardener was silent for several seconds. Her mouth hung open, eyes on Carrie’s twitching body, but no words came out. Then, there were tears. Sue caught them because Miss Gardener didn’t bother to wipe them away. She let them fall down her cheeks as her expression shifted from horror to rage.

“I’ve called an ambulance,” Sue said. 

“Good,” Miss Gardener said. She finally wiped her eyes and contained her expression. 

“M-Miss G-G-Gard-Gardener--” Carrie gurgled out. Her voice was thick with blood. She sounded like she was trying to talk underwater.

“I’m here, baby,” Miss Gardener’s voice was gentler than Sue had ever heard it before. She brushed one of Carrie’s limp hands to let her know she was there, then looked at Sue with eyes as cold as stone and said, “She can still talk. You’re not putting enough pressure. All you’ve done is slowed down the process of death. She’s going to bleed out.”

Those words didn’t feel real. Sue couldn’t even process them correctly.

“Wh-what?”

“But we aren’t going to let that happen,” Miss Gardener said quickly. She nudged Sue. “Let me see her. I have to do this.”

Sue surrendered Carrie to Miss Gardener’s grasp. 

“Thank you. Now go get me a towel or something. Something dry. This is too wet.” And then Miss Gardener wrapped her fingers around Carrie’s neck and started to strangle her.

“Stop!” The cry came out from Sue’s throat without consent. The sight of the coach with her hands on Carrie’s little body made a sort of protectiveness flood through her. She tried to shove Miss Gardener off, but Miss Gardener shoved her back harder. “Stop, you’re hurting her!”

“She’s going to die if I don’t do this, Sue!” Miss Gardener yelled at her. Her voice was barbed and wrapped in shards of glass. “Go get me something dry to put around her neck NOW!”

Finally, Sue was spurred into motion. She scrambled to her feet, momentarily slipping on a puddle of blood, and ran into the kitchen. She practically ransacked the place, searching for something to use as a bandage, but couldn’t find anything aside from hand towels that would be much too small. Not wanting to waste anymore time, she decided to rip the curtains off of their bar over the window and use those. She sprinted back to Miss Gardener, dragging the rather ugly brown and green drapes with her.

Miss Gardener did not question her choice of bandaging. She merely swiped the curtains from her without a word and peeled back Sue’s shirt from Carrie’s throat, revealing the ugly gash stretching from underneath Carrie’s right ear to underneath Carrie’s chin. 

It was the first time Sue had seen it. When she first ran into the house, she had been too panicked to even inspect the wound. She just saw Carrie on her hands and knees, one hand clasping her neck, gagging and wheezing while surrounded by blood, and  _ knew  _ it couldn’t have been good.

The wound was dark red, so dark it almost looked black. The edges were cleanly cut and spread open like a ziplock bag. Blood was gushing out like a fountain, too much blood, too much blood--

Sue keeled over and vomited.

Miss Gardener didn’t even spare her a glance. She threw Sue’s shirt--it had been white once--to the side and wrapped the curtains around Carrie’s neck until it looked like the girl was wearing a huge, bulky, and extremely ugly scarf (seriously, what self-respecting person would have green and brown swirl-patterned curtains in their house?). Then, she curled her fingers around her throat and pressed down with all her weight.

The fabric was already starting to turn red.

“The best thing we can do for her is keep her from choking,” Miss Gardener said to Sue’s hunched form. “She won’t suffer if she bleeds to death.” Then, to Carrie, teeth clenched, tears bright in her eyes, “I’m not going to let you drown.”

Carrie stared back up at her, her own eyes lacking so much light. They reminded Sue of a dead fish.

But Carrie wasn’t dead. Not yet. Not ever.

“Sue, get the blood out of her mouth,” Miss Gardener said, but Sue didn’t really hear her. She couldn’t hear anything aside from Carrie’s weak whimpers and wheezes.

Nothing felt real. The only real thing was the blood. Everything else was shifting and sliding away.

“SUE!!”

Sue flinched. She looked up at Miss Gardener. “Y-yes?”

“Get the blood out of her mouth!” Miss Gardener yelled, sounding both firm and frantic at the same time. “She won’t be able to breathe!”

Sue understood her this time. She scrambled across the slippery hardwood and opened Carrie’s mouth. She used her hands to scoop out the blood that had accumulated inside, and she wondered if she stuck her fingers in far enough if they would come out of the wound.

Miss Gardener lifted her hands for just a moment, allowing Carrie to take a breath, then pressed back down again. She wedged her knee down against Carrie’s collarbone, adding more and more pressure. Carrie’s eyes were starting to go red. Sue realized they were bleeding, too.

Sue wondered if it would be better to just let Carrie die. As much as she didn’t want her to fade away, the poor thing was suffering. 

Another thought then hit Sue like a freight train.

Did Carrie even  _ want  _ to live?

Sue glanced back at Margaret White’s body. Carrie’s mother was dead. She had no father and no friends. With the way she grew up, Sue doubted there was any other family for her to go to. If she lived, she would be in debt from hospital bills. She wouldn’t have a home, either. 

What was there left for Carrie? Her existence held so little value…and yet Sue found herself clinging onto whatever was left like a dog to a bone in her stead.

“It’s going to be okay, Carrie,” Sue whispered. One hand was cradling Carrie’s blood-streaked cheek, the other was stroking through Carrie’s damp hair. The blood in the locks was thick and sticky, dried to her scalp. Sue tried to scratch it off with her nails, wanting to bring back the natural red, not this sickening, evil red.

Carrie looked up at her, eyes glazed. Pinpricks of red were spotted all throughout her scleras, slowly devouring the white. 

There was no hope in her gaze.

Carrie had no hope, so Sue hoped for her. 

It didn’t mend her sliced flesh, it didn’t stop the bleeding, hell, it didn’t even make up for what she’d done to the girl, but, damnit, it was  _ something.  _ It was all any of them had left.

Sue thought to her friends and wondered what they would have done if they were there instead of her. Chris would have held the knife. Chris would have pried open the maw of the wound with her bare hands. Chris would have reached out and ripped out Carrie’s trachea. Chris probably would have done all of this if it were her under the punishment of the blade instead of Carrie. At the very least, she would have stayed away and watched, not wanting to get any blood on her expensive shoes. 

She wondered if Tommy would have done something or if he would have left Carrie to bleed out, thinking he was granting her mercy. She wondered if he ever did care about Carrie or if he feigned it for her own approval.

It all circled back in the end, over and over.

This was her fault. 

“You’re going to be okay,” Sue said to Carrie again, fiercely this time. “Do you hear me, Carrie? You aren’t going to die.”

Carrie looked like she wanted to believe her, like she wanted to trust her words, but she couldn’t, and that  _ hurt _ . It hurt worse than anything Sue could inflict on herself, and it was in that moment that Sue realized that suicide would not make up for the things she had done. It wouldn’t be that easy.

There was the sound of sirens outside. A moment later, a cluster of paramedics burst into the house in an explosion of blue. Their scrubs wouldn’t be clean for very long, and Sue wondered if they would turn purple from the mixing red blood.

One of the paramedics flipped a switch on the wall, and a burst of radiance filled the living room. It was the first time she was seeing Carrie in the light, and she looked even worse than she had expected, covered in blood from head-to-toe, trembling like a newborn baby goat, crying red tears. Her skin was an awful milky white shade, as if all the blood in her body had truly spilled out, leaving her empty and drained. The curtains around her neck were soaked. 

The paramedics took one look at Carrie and began shouting commands at one another. One of them tried to move Miss Gardener, but Miss Gardener said, “I’m the only thing keeping the blood flow steady. If I take my hands away, it’s going to speed up, and I don’t know how much more she can lose.” 

The paramedic pursed his lips, then nodded. He yelled to his companions to help him lift Carrie onto the stretcher, then told Miss Gardener to stay steady. Miss Gardener nodded.

The moment Carrie was placed on the stretcher, the paramedics and Miss Gardener were out the door. Sue barely had time to chase after them and climb into the ambulance before they slammed the back doors shut and sped off onto the local hospital.

The ambulance was going so fast that Sue could hardly stay seated without tumbling over. Shouting, clasping grips and stabbing needles, scribbling on white paper pads- there was so much going on in such a small space. Flurries of abstract motion. That unnatural freeze that soaked beneath Carrie’s milky grey skin was now a heat- burning up, boiling, blazing. Such a temperature spike so quickly, and they’re so close now to getting her help… Was she giving up now?

Or had she already given up a long time ago?

One of the machines to Sue’s right began to beep rapidly, deafeningly, like some kind of angry force. It beat viciously into her brain, but Carrie’s past whimpering was still louder, still replaying in its endless cycle of torture. A paramedic with blonde hair stabbed an IV into Carrie’s wrist.

“What happened to this girl?” One of the paramedics, this one with kinky brown hair and dark skin, asked, her urgent tone thinly veiled.

Miss Gardener looked to Sue, and Sue managed to keep her voice steady enough to say, “Her mother cut her. I don’t know why.”

“We’ve called for a crew to clean up the other body,” The paramedic said. “There was no heartbeat.”

Sue and Miss Gardener nodded, but Sue knew the coach felt the same thing as her: nothing. Neither of them cared for Margaret White.

“What are your relations to her?” The paramedic asked.

“I’m her godmother,” Miss Gardener answered without missing a beat. Paramedics were whirling around her, trying to work through her presence, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t. She was the only thing keeping Carrie alive.

Miss Gardener glanced at Sue. “That’s her godsister.”

Sue didn’t argue the claim. In fact, she jumped into it, “I was going to check on her after something personal happened and found her injured. I called Lynn after calling the ambulance.”

If Miss Gardener was bothered by her using her first name, she didn’t show it. She just nodded in agreement to the fabled story.

“There’s so much blood,” One of the other paramedics whispered. He was quite a bit younger than the others and looked absolutely shaken, not yet desensitized to the horrors of being an EMS. Sue then realized that he must have been a medical student on a ride-along. One hell of a school trip, she thought. “All of this from a slashed throat? I mean, I know it bleeds a lot, but…”

“It’s not-- not all of it is hers,” Sue said. She struggled to bring the explanation to words. She didn’t want to bring up the blood dump, she didn’t want to make it true by saying it out loud, she didn’t want to remember it, so Miss Gardener did it for her.

“It was a school prank,” Miss Gardener said, and there was a growl in her voice. While Sue felt guilt and horror over the memory, she seemed to feel pure, unbridled rage. And for good reason, too. “Some kids dumped pig blood on her.”

_ Pig blood? _

Sue hadn’t actually known what the source of the blood was. She was holding out hope that it was just fake, not that that would make it any better, but this revelation broke that down. It finally brought the anger, too, and now she knew what Miss Gardener was feeling.

How  _ dare  _ Chris?

The med student’s eyes widened. “I heard about that,” He said. He looked down at Carrie as if she were a goddamn messiah. “This is her?”

“Yes,” Sue could hear the growl in her voice. “Her name is Carrie White.” 

It took a long, very long ten minutes before the ambulance finally pulled into the emergency station at the local hospital. The team was bursting through the doors in seconds, completely prepared, white jackets and blue gloves and silver chrome instruments. They crowded Carrie, yelling. None of what they were saying was good.

Sue and Miss Gardener followed them in, more running, more shouting, more needles. Someone ordered for immediate surgery. Doctors formed a typhoon, a tornado surrounding the gurney as it was rolled inside, and a collection of nurses egged Sue and Miss Gardener with personal questions. Who, what, when, where, why, how- over and over again.

It wasn’t long before Miss Gardener’s hands were forced away, replaced by a paramedic’s, and Carrie was wheeled off somewhere further into the hospital, somewhere not even Miss Gardener could follow. Sue and her coach were left in the wakes of the panic, standing aimlessly in shock. 

People were staring. It was only then that Sue remembered that she was shirtless. She was standing in the middle of a public area with only a bra to hide her tits hanging out, but she found that she didn’t really care. She looked down at herself, and her stomach and chest were smeared with blood. Carrie’s blood.

Sue and Miss Gardener had no other choice but to sit down in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room. All around them, there was whispering. The video had spread more than Sue had thought.

“Did you see her? All covered in blood…”

“That was her, wasn’t it? That girl…”

“I heard they used period blood…”

“Have you seen the video yet? Here, watch. It’s fucking wild…”

“What happened to her? I thought they just poured stuff on her. She was bleeding…”

“That was her. That was Scary White…”

That last one made Sue lurch up to her feet. She stalked over to the pair of young boys nearby, not caring about their father sitting next to them, and was about to give them a real reason to be in the emergency room aside from some pneumonia when Miss Gardener grabbed her by the arm. 

“Control your girl,” The father of the boys said.

“Control your boys,” Miss Gardener said. She pulled Sue behind her and towered over the man. With her face, hands, and aquamarine dress covered in blood, she looked absolutely terrifying. “Teach them to watch their fucking mouths and not call people names. Next time it’ll be one of them on a stretcher.”

“Was that a threat?” The man growled.

“It’ll be a reality if you don’t shut your damn mouth,” Miss Gardener hissed. She pulled Sue back over to their seats and sat down, not letting the man reply. Sue did the same. When Miss Gardener released her arm, there was a bloody handprint left behind.

“Does your mother know?” Miss Gardener finally asked. Neither of them had spoken to each other for several long seconds. “About you being here?”

Sue shook her head. “Not yet.”

“You should probably call her. She must be worried.”

Sue nodded, but didn’t take out her phone. Miss Gardener glanced over at her tense form, then said nothing. She did not persist on the idea of calling her mom.

Time passed. It was so cold inside the hospital, so fucking cold, and Sue realized it was because she had gotten used to the heat of Carrie’s blood on her. Now, it was dried over her chest and stomach and thighs and hands. It was beginning to crust and flake. She picked at it while she waited. 

“Were you in on it?”   
Sue looked at her coach. Miss Gardener’s was low and resentful.

“No,” Sue said. “I had no idea.”

“You better be telling me the truth,” Miss Gardener said. “Or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Sue didn’t doubt her on that. 

“You were there,” Sue said. “At the prom.”

“I was,” Miss Gardener didn’t turn to her, but her eyes did slide over to her. 

“What happened?” Sue asked quietly.

For a moment, Miss Gardener was silent. She looked back down at her hands, which were slimed with blood up to the wrist. She clenched her fingers into fists.

“Carrie was happy,” Miss Gardener began. “She was smiling and dancing. Some of your little goons were dancing with her, too. Frieda and Helen. Others. They were treating her like a normal kid. She looked so happy.”

“Was Tommy good to her?” Sue had to know. She had to know everything. She needed to.

“He was,” Miss Gardener nodded. “I threatened to expel him if he didn’t.”

Sue laughed. It took her by surprise. She didn’t think it was possible after what had happened. 

“They danced,” Miss Gardener went on. “I danced with her, too. Her hands are so small.” She paused for a moment. Her hands clenched even tighter. “She and Tommy were elected as Prom King and Queen. Carrie was smiling so much. But then the blood fell and she started crying and she ran out.”

“I saw that,” Sue said. “In the video.”

Miss Gardener nodded. “I tried to stay and calm everything down, but then I noticed that she was gone, so I went after her. I should have been faster.”

“Not even I was fast enough,” Sue said, noticing her coach’s guilt. “What happened to Tommy? I haven’t heard anything from him.”

“He ran out after Chris and Billy,” Miss Gardener said. “I haven’t heard from him, either. Not that I stuck around very long.”

Sue nodded grimly. She wondered if Tommy were even  _ alive _ . Would Chris and Billy have killed him for going after them?

“What’s going to happen to her?” Sue asked after another few minutes of silence between her and her coach. “Her mother… She doesn’t have anyone to go to anymore.”

“I’m taking her,” Miss Gardener said, surprising Sue.

“Really?”   
“Yes, really,” Miss Gardener narrowed her eyes at her. “I said I was her godmother. I’m sticking to it. She’s coming with me.”

“That’s very sweet of you,” Sue said. 

The silence came back. Neither of them said anything until a nurse walked up to them an hour later.

“How is she?” Miss Gardener asked immediately.

“Carrie White is stable,” The nurse answered. “She lost a lot of blood, but she’s going to be just fine. Would you like to see her?”

Sue and Miss Gardener nodded. 

Carrie looked dwarfed by the hospital bed she laid in. The blood was completely scrubbed from her body and her hair was its natural red again. The bloody prom dress was swapped with a blank white gown. IVs and other wires formed a tangled nest around her. Bandages were wrapped around her neck. Her features were sunken, but relaxed as she slept. Or, what Sue hoped was sleep.

Inside the room, a doctor was waiting for them.

“She got three hundred stitches inside and outside the seven-inch gash in her throat,” He told Sue and Miss Gardener. “The surgeon closed up the veins and repaired all the muscle and tendons.”

“She’ll be okay?” Sue asked.

The doctor nodded. “She will be. She’ll spend a few more days with us here, then she’ll be able to leave.” He looked at Miss Gardener. “You will take her, I presume? I got word of her mother.”

Miss Gardener nodded. “Yes. I will be.”

“Very good,” The doctor glanced at Carrie. “She’ll be waking up soon. I’ll let you both have a moment with her.”

It took ten more minutes for Carrie to wake up, but her hazel eyes eventually fluttered open. She squinted in the bright light of the hospital room, then blinked. She seemed very confused.

“Wha… Where…? Mama…?” She mumbled blearily.

“Carrie?” Sue said.

Carrie looked over at her. “Sue?” She looked at Miss Gardener next. “Miss Gardener? Where…where am I?”

“You’re in the hospital,” Miss Gardener told her, taking one of her hands. Carrie looked at the blood all over them fearfully. “Do you remember anything that happened?”

“No,” Carrie shook her head sluggishly, then winced. “Where am I? Where’s my Mama? Why is Sue shirtless?”

That got the smallest laugh out of both Sue and Miss Gardener.

“Haven’t you heard? Shirts are way overrated.” Sue joked.

Carrie blinked her big, sparkly eyes. “Oh,” She said. “My neck hurts.”

The small smiles disappeared. Miss Gardener rubbed Carrie’s knuckles with her thumb.

“Carrie…” Sue said. “Your mother is dead. She tried to kill you. You almost died.”

Carrie was silent. Then, softly, so softly, she uttered, “Oh, that’s terrible.”

“I’m so sorry, Carrie,” Sue said sadly.

“She hurt me,” Carrie whispered.

“She won’t do so ever again,” Miss Gardener assured her. “I promise.”

Carrie’s expression didn’t change. She wanted to believe Miss Gardener, Sue could tell. But she couldn’t bring herself to do so.

Not yet.


	2. cartoid

Lynn had seen her fair share of gruesome injuries in her time, both as an active sports player and gym coach. 

When she was on her high school’s wrestling team, she vividly remembered throwing her (male, mind you) opponent to the ground and hearing the distinct sound of bones cracking. There was something haunting about being on top of a person while their skeleton seemed to fold inward, having her ear so close to that sickening snap. The resulting nightmare-inducing scream was actually a mercy to the other noise.

She had scrambled off of the boy, backing away on her hands and knees like she was a scared animal. Her opponent must have landed wrong when she pinned him because his knee was bent at an unnatural angle and he was screaming bloody murder. Someone in the audience threw up. Someone else fainted. The boy’s parents rushed over to him and began yelling.

The parents had tried to sue Lynn for the broken leg, but the school defended her, saying it wasn’t her fault and injuries were to be expected in sports. She obtained a title of sorts, being one of the most feared wrestlers in the district. She took it with honor, despite its double-edged outcomes.

The experience desensitized her to all types of gore, but not without a price. For a while, she was sensitive to any sound that resembled snapping bones. Even a foot stepping on a twig was enough to bring back the memory of the boy and the broken leg. She got over it eventually, but at the time, it had been hell.

Injuries became repetitive after that. Broken arms, broken legs, broken noses- she saw it all when she became a coach. They always went the same way, too- that damned snapping sound, a limb bent at an angle that wasn’t normal, screaming that was so loud it could probably break the sound barrier, everyone in the general vicinity panicking like chickens with their heads cut off. Not that Lynn blamed them for such a reaction; she supposed it wasn’t ever the same after you were chest-to-chest with someone when the injury happened.

But in sports, broken bones were the worst thing that could be inflicted upon someone. Scratches, bruises, black eyes, bloody noses, even the broken bones themselves to some extent were nothing compared to other horrors. So as the repetition of injuries continued its cycle, Lynn believed nothing could get worse than that time back in high school.

And then she entered the darkened White bungalow and saw Carrie on the ground, surrounded by blood and covered in blood and frothing up blood, and that way of thinking was thrown out the window.

This. This was worse.

Lynn used to think that the screaming was the worst part of any injury, regardless of severity. That elongated, guttural sound of agony that the victim didn’t have the power to mute or muffle, bearing completely raw emotion, ripped out from the throat without control or consent. 

But as Lynn had knelt above Carrie White’s body, she now knew that the screaming was a mercy. The silence was the real thing that she should have been fearing all these years.

The screaming, at least, as awful as it was, meant the victim was alive. Even with their mind clouded with agony, they were sentient enough to even  _ feel  _ that agony. They were there, they knew, they could feel.

Carrie White was not, did not, could not.

The silence did not bring serenity. The silence did not bring peace. The silence brought panic- overwhelming, blood-rushing panic that made Lynn feel like she was standing in the middle of a rushing white water river, battered by the current. It made everything fall away into little broken pieces that would never be able to form its proper puzzle ever again. It made her feel true, unadulterated, unbridled terror for the first time since she was sixteen and in a gymnasium that smelled of salt and sweat with another kid screaming his heart out right beneath her.

It made her feel  _ helpless. _

And then, as if a giant log had been hurled from the raging river of dread and hit her in the face, awareness came rushing back to her. She stopped the flow of tears that she had not been able to fight back in those initial moments of hysteria and got her head on straight. 

Sue was there, holding Carrie’s body close to her chest. Margaret was there, too, face-down on the floor, unmoving, but Lynn could have hardly cared. Her focus was entirely on the young girl bleeding all over the place before her.

The cause of that bleeding didn’t feel real, either.

_ “Her throat. She slit her throat.” _

Lynn remembered watching something on TV, one of those cookiecutter crime shows that had been copy and pasted dozens of times before, saying something about how a throat wound could bleed out within minutes, if not seconds. She cursed her school training for not teaching her how to deal with  _ this _ , opting instead to make all the teachers relearn the heimlich maneuver and CPR for the hundredth time in a row.

When she took Carrie’s small, shaking body into her arms, she discovered something worse than the silence. The  _ gurgling.  _ That wet, foamy sound that gargled in the back of Carrie’s throat, so desperate for proper articulation and enunciation, choked back by a torrent of her own blood. It may have meant she was still alive and fighting, but Lynn much preferred the silence.

Unwrapping Sue’s shirt from around Carrie’s neck and actually gazing upon the wound felt like a physical knife against Lynn’s throat. She had never been one of those people who could feel pain from watching others get hurt, and yet, in that moment of raw horror, she swore she could  _ feel _ her own flesh being sliced open, muscles and tendons snapping away like weak thread, vessels punctured and windpipe split, slowly filling her lungs with her own blood, drowning her, restricting breathing--and then she realized she  _ wasn’t  _ breathing. Not while she looked at the gash. It used its severed arteries as a noose and strangled her, so she strangled it back.

Even with the hideous green and brown curtains wrapped around the wound like bulky bandages, Carrie’s neck was still so small. Lynn’s hands were so large. She felt like she was trying to asphyxiate a baby bird.

Lynn realized then that the experience in the gym was not the most horrific thing she had ever witnessed. At least she was a teenager when it happened. Being an adult and squeezing onto a child’s slashed open throat hurt in more ways than she could truly express. There was just something so fucking terrifying about being the one to pinch gushing blood vessels closed, to be the hands around a dying girl’s throat, to be the one and only defining factor to if that girl would survive the night. Even though she knew it had to be done, Lynn wanted to cut her hands off for the things they had done in those horrifying six minutes before the ambulance arrived.

Carrie’s eyes had looked so dull, so lifeless. It was a stark contrast to half an hour before she was bleeding out all over the place, when they were full of joy and life.

Lynn had never seen Carrie so happy before. She had never seen her dance, either, which made everything pre-blood dump even better. Carrie looked like a normal teenage girl, having fun at her school prom, being treated as she should have been all these years.

Lynn remembered, clear as day, those hours before the destruction.

Carrie had truly stuck out like a sore thumb in the Prom, but not in the way that any of her bullies had been expecting. The dress she wore, hand-sewn herself she had said, was soft pink and seemed to glitter in the overhead lights. Her red hair was brushed back to neatness, though that one iconic lock of bangs still dangled in front of her left eye. When they had spotted each other, Lynn was endeared to watch Carrie rip away from Tommy and run over to her in her heels. 

“Miss Gardener, you look incredible!” Carrie had exclaimed.

“Thank you, Carrie,” Lynn said. “You look beautiful.”   
As shy and modest as always, Carrie ducked her head and said, “Oh, thank you.”

Tommy had then walked over to them. “Miss Gardener, I don’t think I would ever see you in a dress.”

Lynn gave him a sharp look. “Tommy.” 

Tommy cleared his throat. “You guys want some punch? I heard Stokes and Freddy spiked it.”

“Oh no,” Carrie said in a woebegone voice. “Isn’t it dangerous to drink spikes? What if someone chokes?”

“Really?” Lynn said to Tommy at the same time.

Tommy had laughed, then noticed Lynn’s unamused, deadpan expression. He stopped instantly.

“Uh-- No.” He said. “I’m joking.” He rubbed his palms on his black pants. “I’m going to get us some of that punch! Which is not spiked!”

Lynn rolled his eyes as he skittered away, then turned her attention back to Carrie. She looked so amazed as she gazed around the Prom, like it was the nicest event she had ever been to.

She and Carrie had talked until Tommy came back, but it wasn’t the last she would see of the girl. She chatted with her several times during the night, even danced with her on a few occasions. It was nice to see her smile after everything.

But of course, it had been ruined. Would Carrie ever get to experience true bliss without someone taking it away from her?

The memory of the blood dump had brought Lynn back to the present, to the blood on her hands on that moment. Every time she would lift them long enough for Carrie to get air, more would gush out, and she slammed them back into place every time, desperate to halt the flow. She wouldn’t have taken them away at all if Carrie wouldn’t have suffocated from the pressure on her neck. 

Lynn thought about Chris when she was effectively strangling Carrie. Her own will was keeping her from adding the proper weight to Carrie’s neck, so she made herself angry to compensate for the thing she really didn’t want to do.

How could anyone be so cruel? Especially to someone who didn’t deserve such treatment? Lynn imagined it was Chris beneath her hands, and that made her squeeze tighter.

She knew it had been Chris, and not just because of her gut feeling. Norma had told her.

During the panic of laughter and shock and confusion after the blood dump, Lynn had found Norma Watson, Chris’s second-in-command, in the crowd. For a moment, she didn’t know if it was even really her, as she wasn’t used to seeing her without her trademarked red backwards hat, but then recognized her snarky face and grappled onto her with her nails dug in. However, when Norma looked at her, her face was anything but snarky. It was  _ horrified. _

“What happened?” Lynn had demanded. “Who did this?”

“Chris,” Norma told her instantly. She looked back to the stage, to the blood dripping off the edge. “I-I didn’t know it was blood…”

“What?”

Norma shook her head, mouth hanging open.

“Norma!” Lynn dug her nails in further. She didn’t care if it got her fired, she had to know. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Norma looked back at her, wide-eyed and sickened. “I didn’t know it was real blood.” She said. “Chris-- she said it was red water. Just dyed with food coloring. I didn’t think she would--”

Lynn had released her, noticing that Carrie was now gone. She couldn’t stick around any longer. 

Before she rushed away, she could have sworn she faintly heard Norma utter, “I’m sorry.”

When the paramedics finally came rushing in, Lynn did not let go of Carrie. She couldn’t risk it, not anymore. Not when they were so close to salvation. The paramedics let her stay by the girl’s side until they got to the actual hospital, but then not even she could remain. She had to peel her hands back, and they were completely covered in blood.

She and Sue sat in the waiting room for what felt like forever, when it was really only two and a half hours at best. They spoke to each other in brief, choppy instances. The stink of guilt wavering off of Sue was sickening--though, that may have just been the stench of the rancid pig blood and regular human blood mixed together into a miasma upon their skin.

When the nurse finally came out and walked up to them, Lynn had been expecting the worst. Surely such a lethal wound take longer to treat. But it didn’t, apparently, because the nurse said that Carrie was stable and Carrie was going to live and they would be able to see her if they liked.

They did.

Lynn and Sue both comforted Carrie when she woke up. Her voice was very hoarse and weak, and Lynn guessed that was both because of her throat wound and from her having to strangle her to keep her from bleeding out.

Carrie didn’t seem very happy to be alive, but then Lynn realized she didn’t have much to live for in the first place. Her mother was all she had, and now even she was gone (the doctors said it was a heart attack). Lynn was hoping to take the place of that empty maternal role and give Carrie the life she deserved. She just wanted to see her happy again.

It was one in the morning when Lynn finally left the hospital. Since she had rode in the ambulance, Sue’s mother dropped her off back at the White bungalow to get her car. 

The place was already swarmed with yellow tape and crime scene investigators. A few neighbors were standing out on their porch, watching the scene. Red and blue lights lit up the dark street. A police officer walked up to Lynn while she was trying to get to her car and began asking her questions about what happened.

By the time she got home, Lynn was mentally and physically drained. The first thing she did when she pulled up in her driveway was step out of her car and throw up in the lawn. Carrie’s blood was still on her hands.

Lynn lost her complete sense of time when she took a shower. She stood beneath the spray of scalding hot water and blankly watched blood run down the drain. She dimly wondered if this was what Carrie saw That Day in the locker room.

She finally broke when she got out of the shower. Staring at her own reflection in the fogged up mirror, she crumpled. Everything she had been holding back hit her like brass knuckles and she sunk to the floor, sobbing.

The tears stopped, eventually. When Lynn dredged herself from the bathroom floor, she went downstairs, started a fire in her fireplace, and threw her blood-stained Prom dress into the flames.

She would not be getting sleep tonight.

* * *

Carrie was permitted to leave the hospital two days later. By then, it seemed like everyone in the whole country had heard of what happened. Apparently a few reporters had even tried to sneak into the hospital under the guise of being family members to do an interview with Carrie, but were wrangled out.

Carrie herself looked no better than the day she came in. Her hair was wiry and tangled, and her skin was very, very ashen. Her eyes were dead, sunken into two pits in her skull. When Lynn had stepped into the hospital room, her gaze did not brighten like Lynn had been hoping. She just stared at her with a blank expression.

Lynn was given strict instructions to keep an eye on Carrie’s neck, to come in if even a single stitch popped out. Carrie was prescribed tramadol, which she should take a few hours after arriving home. If Lynn’s house could even be considered her home.

The drive was silent. Lynn tried to fill the space, but Carrie never responded. Hell, she barely even looked at her. All she did was look out the window with the same dead fish look in her eyes.

Was this even still the little girl she had danced with at Prom?

“Here we are,” Lynn said as she parked. “There’s someone waiting for you inside. I’ve told them all about you.”

Carrie tensed. Lynn realized her mistake and quickly went on, “They’ll like you, I promise. It’s nothing bad.”

Carrie’s anxiety did not go away. Lynn quickly unbuckled both of their seatbelts (had Carrie ever even ridden in a car before?), then led Carrie inside. Instantly, Carrie flinched, probably expecting someone awful to be waiting there for her, but instead a grey pit bull bounded up to them, tail wagging so fast it became a blur. Carrie relaxed slightly.

“You have a dog.”

It was the first thing Carrie had said to her all day. Lynn smiled and nodded, scratching behind the dog’s ear.

“I never told you?”

Carrie shook her head.

“Well, her name is Rosebud. You can also call her Rosie. She responds to both.”

Carrie nodded. She reached down and tentatively pet Rosebud. Rosebud responded by eagerly licking her hand. Carrie pulled away with a tiny noise, but it wasn’t one of shock or fear, rather awe. Had Carrie ever touched a dog before?

“Come on. I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.”

Lynn gave Carrie a tour of the house while Rosebud trailed after them. Carrie nodded to everything she said, not voicing her opinions about anything. Not that Lynn was expecting her to. She wasn’t like that. Even if it weren’t for her traumatic injury, she wouldn’t say anything.

By the time Lynn was done showing Carrie around, she realized it was only now turning to 12:00. They still had the whole day stretched out before them, and Lynn had no idea what to do.

It was weird, she thought. She had imagined raising Carrie herself several times before this, but she always pictured them doing regular family things like watching TV together or baking or going jogging. Now that the opportunity was finally in front of her, she didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Though, in her defense, in all of her fantasized ideas, she hadn’t pictured Carrie with a slashed open throat and severe trauma.

“Would you like to do anything?” Lynn asked. Might as well like Carrie choose.

But Carrie just shook her head, looking as clueless as she felt. 

“Ah-- well…” Lynn was grasping at straws here. What did Carrie even like to do? “Here, I’ll turn the TV on for you. You can watch something.”

With a small bit of coaxing, she got Carrie to sit down on the couch. Rosebud jumped up next to her. Lynn turned on the TV and opened up the channel guide, then handed the remote to Carrie.

“Turn on whatever you want.”

Carrie looked down at the remote, then up at her, blinking.

_ Oh, please don’t tell me she doesn’t know how to-- _

“I-I, umm…”

Yep. That was enough of an answer. Carrie didn’t know how TVs worked.

“Oh, let me--” Lynn took the remote back and began explaining how it worked. “See these two arrows? If you press on them, you can go up in the channels. That’s what all of those little boxes on the screen are. And you can select with this circle in the middle.” She demonstrated, selecting one of the channels and turning on one of those house hunting shows where the white couple (and they’re ALWAYS white) never seem satisfied with any of the options they’re given even though they’re all beautiful houses. “So, is there anything specific you want to watch? Sports? Cartoons? Movies?”

“This is okay,” Carrie said softly.

“Alright,” Lynn set the remote down next to her. “You can change it anytime you want.”

Carrie nodded, then looked up at the TV. Lynn lingered beside her for a moment before walking into the kitchen.

Wow, okay. She did  _ not _ expect motherhood to be this awkward. This was definitely going to be an adventure for her and Carrie both.

* * *

Time passed. The hours went by. Carrie didn’t say very much. There were some instances where Lynn completely forgot that Carrie was even there and found herself rushing back into the living room to make sure she was as she had left her (which she always was). 

It was a very quiet day, indeed.

At around five o’clock in the evening, however, that quietness was broken.

There was a whimper.

It was so faint that Lynn thought she was just imagining things at first. She had looked up from the soup she was making (the doctor said that Carrie was going to have a liquid/soft food diet for awhile) and furrowed her eyebrows. She strained her ears, but the only sound she got in return was the voice of one of the Property Brothers (she couldn’t tell which was which) from the TV, so she turned her attention back to stirring the noodles in the pot in front of her, writing it off as nothing.

But then it sounded again, this time slightly louder.

Lynn’s spoon clattered against the countertop when she took it out of the pot. She looked out of the kitchen. Maybe it was just Rosebud? She whistled for her pet, then heard the scratching of claws beneath her. She looked down and saw that Rosebud was already there, begging for food in the way she always did when Lynn would cook. Lynn gave into her adorable puppy dog face and tossed her a piece of meat, which she scarfed down greedily.

Well, the whimper was probably just from Rosebud pleading for food in her usual doggy way. But then there was another whimper while she was looking down at the dog, and it had most certainly  _ not  _ come from Rosebud.

Lynn’s eyes widened.

Remember when it was said that Lynn sort of forgot that she had a child now living in her house? This was one of those times.

Lynn hurried out of the kitchen and into the living room, where she found Carrie curled up against one of the pillows, hand on her throat. Lynn was half-expecting there to be blood everywhere and was expecting Carrie to already be dead even more. If only she had been faster, paid more attention, actually known what the fuck she was doing and how to take care of a child--

Carrie whimpered again.

Lynn knelt down beside the couch and gently touched her arm. Carrie flinched away, eyes popping open wide. She looked at her as if she were expecting someone else, someone worse. There was terror written all over her face, and Lynn could tell she had an apology sitting on her tongue.

“I-I’m sorry--”

And there it was.

“Shh, it’s alright,” Lynn said to her, keeping her voice low and soft as to not freak the poor girl out even more. “You’re alright. You’re not in trouble. Are you okay?”

“M-my neck--” Carrie’s voice was strangled, caught in her throat like it was snagged by a fish hook. “I-it hurts--”

Lynn cursed herself for not knowing that. Of course that would be the cause of Carrie’s pain- she got her damn throat slashed open! Was she expecting it to be her damn elbows or something?

“The painkillers have probably worn off by now,” Lynn said, glancing at the time projected underneath the TV. “I’ll go get you some more.”   
She retrieved a tablet of Tramadol and a glass of water in record time, not wanting to leave Carrie alone for very long. She helped her sit up, then set the two items in her hands. Carrie went to take a sip from the cup, but flinched away at the last second.

“N-no--”

Lynn frowned. “You have to drink, sweetheart.” She said. “You need to take that medicine.”

“I-I can’t--” 

“It’ll make the pain go away.”

Carrie shook her head, then cried out in pain when she did so, nearly spilling the water. When Lynn reached out to steady her, she jerked away as if her hands were made of fire.

“Hey, hey,” Lynn spoke softly. “It’s okay, Carrie. You’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Carrie looked at her, and there were tears glistening in her big hazel eyes.

“Why don’t you want to drink?” Lynn asked. Maybe if she knew the cause of the problem, she could solve it.

“Hurts--to swallow.”

Once again, Lynn mentally punched herself for not knowing that. She couldn’t imagine what Carrie must have been feeling at that moment. Was she worried that the stitches would fly out if she simply took a drink of water?

“Oh, honey,” Lynn said sadly. She reached out and gently rubbed Carrie’s shoulder, hoping to comfort her. “I know it hurts, but the medicine will help with that, I promise. You just need to take one sip, that’s all. Just one. Think you can do that for me?”

Carrie looked at her uneasily, then nodded. She drank from the cup and put the pill in her mouth while Lynn rubbed her back comfortingly. The poor thing got an expression of absolute agony on her face when she swallowed, but she managed to force it down.

“It hurts!” Carrie cried.

“You did it, baby,” Lynn said, smiling warmly. She thumbed away the tears that had sprung to Carrie’s eyes. “You did it. I’m so proud of you.”

“Hurts,” Carrie uttered again. The hand that wasn’t holding the cup grasped at her neck, as if she thought the flesh was still splitting open and she could mend it back together if she held it for long enough. 

“I know,” Lynn said. “The medicine is going to help with that, though. You’ll feel better soon.”

Carrie nodded weakly. Her eyes were so dull and lifeless. Lynn wished she would smile.

“I’m going to go take the pot off the oven before I burn the whole house down,” Lynn said. “I assume that you aren’t up to eating right now?”

Carrie shook her head.

“Okay. But when the medicine starts working, you’re going to have to eat something. Doctor’s orders.”

Lynn went back to the kitchen and took the pot of soup off of the burner. She got to it just in time; it was about to bubble over the edge.

When Lynn went back to the couch, two bowls of soup in hand, Carrie was leaning back against the cushions, a glazed look in her eyes. Her hand was still on her neck. Lynn nudged her gently to get her attention.

“I’m back,” Lynn said, sitting down next to her. “I hope you like chicken noodle. Homemade.”

Carrie blinked at her slowly. “My Mama would make me boiled chicken.”

“I--” 

That sounded absolutely disgusting.

“Sounds delicious!”

Carrie shrugged. Pain flashed in her eyes, and Lynn knew it wasn’t because of her neck for once.

Everyone knew about Margaret White and her weird teachings, but nobody had ever thought to do something about it. Lynn was, shamefully, one of those people. Even after she grew attached to Carrie, she still held out hope that it wasn’t as bad as everyone was saying, that the bruises that constantly showed up on Carrie’s little body were just from clumsiness.

She should have known. She should have been smarter. Maybe if she stepped in sooner Carrie wouldn’t be the way she was now.

“It was certainly boiled,” Carrie finally said, and Lynn couldn’t help but bark a laugh. Carrie blinked at her in delight.

“I bet it was,” Lynn said back, patting her head.

She and Carrie ended up switching the channel to some animated movie while they ate. Or, while Lynn ate. Carrie didn’t touch her bowl from where it sat on the coffee table in front of the couch.

Some time passed. Lynn noticed that Carrie was starting to blink a lot more, as if she were fighting off tears, but when she looked directly at her, she realized it was from weariness. 

That was right. Tramadol’s main side effect was drowsiness. Lynn tried not to smirk.

“Someone is sleepy,” Lynn said.

“Mm-mmm,” Carrie shook her head stubbornly, then let out the most adorable yawn that Lynn had ever heard. 

“You definitely are,” Lynn set her bowl down, then picked up Carrie’s. “Think you can take a few bites for me? Just a little.”

Carrie looked at her, then the bowl, then back to her, then nodded. She took the bowl from Lynn and began taking small bites.

“Good girl,” Lynn smiled, rubbing Carrie’s back. Maybe taking Carrie wouldn’t be so hard after all!

“Hey, Miss Gardener?”

“Yes, sweet girl?”

“You wanna know what it was like?”

“What?”

Carrie looked up at her, eyes like hollow glass, a thin line of soup dripping down the corner of her mouth, and said, “Your hands felt like they had been hanging me.”

…Or not. 


End file.
